A Cut This Deep
by brumal
Summary: Bike riding was fun and relaxing. At least, it was fun and relaxing when he didn't have another 55 kilograms weighing down the back of his bike. It might have been alright if the additional weight remained still and didn't move, but this extra luggage was constantly swaying back and forth and bouncing around excitedly.


**A/N**: A drabble request with the following prompt: "I really want a worried Rei and an injured Nagisa."

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This was nice. The wind rushing toward him, whipping his short hair back and sometimes flinging his bangs into his eyes. It whistled past his ears too, but it was a pleasant sound. His school tie fluttered against his chest and the sleeves of his shirt stuck to his arms. He was going at a nice speed on level ground, legs circling forever to propel himself forward.

Bike riding was fun and relaxing.

At least, it was fun and relaxing when he didn't have another 55 kilograms weighing down the back of his bike. It might have been alright if the additional weight remained still and didn't move, but this extra luggage was constantly swaying back and forth and bouncing around excitedly.

It was all Rei could do to counterbalance the sudden shifts in weight, but it was getting really exhausting.

"Nagisa-kun," he called out exasperatedly, hoping the wind wouldn't carry his voice away too far.

The blond loosened his hand on Rei's waist and leaned over to hear him better. Rei tilted his body the opposite way so the bike wouldn't swerve. "Yeah, what's up?" he asked happily.

"Can you just… please stop moving so much?" His glasses were sliding down his nose, but he didn't feel secure enough to take off a hand from the handlebars to fix them.

"Oh yeah," the smaller boy replied, jostling around a bit. "Sure." He settled down again and remained still. His fingers dug into the taller boy's shirt again.

Rei let out a steady sigh, relieved that Nagisa actually listened to him for once. Then again, it was more-or-less Nagisa's fault that he was in such a situation. It was the blond who had invited himself over to Rei's home after they finished swim practice and insisted on a convenience store run.

Nagisa had intensely craved some strawberry ice cream, something that the Ryuugazaki household did not have in stock at all times. After rolling on the floor for a while and clinging onto Rei's leg and not letting go, there was nothing the taller boy could do but agree to his proposition and get his bike keys. The blond had whooped happily and even did a small victory dance.

Reflecting on this train of events, Rei realized that it was also partially because of his inability to refuse Nagisa that always got him into these kinds of dilemmas. He thought that, after a few weeks of dating the boy, he would grow some sort of immunity to Nagisa's puppy-dog eyes, but that was far from the case. If anything, he probably grew even weaker to them.

He noticed he had been drifting a little into the road while thinking, so he straightened out the handlebars and continued pedaling. Nagisa had been staying in place, as promised, but he still wobbled occasionally when he whipped his head around to glance at interesting things they passed. It had been maybe a few minutes when he got too bored to keep his promise and started to wiggle around again. Nagisa's hand went from his waist to his shoulder, and he felt the pressure there increase as the boy half-stood up.

"Nagi—" he started to warn, eyes glancing back for a second to see what all the fuss was. But then a stick of half-eaten strawberry ice cream was shoved in his face.

"Rei-chan, do you want some?"

Rei could hear the smile in Nagisa's voice, but this was not the time to be sharing food. The bike veered slightly. "N-No! Not right now…" he said, turning his gaze back to the front. It made him nervous to ride a bike with Nagisa on it. They had done this a few times before, but they almost always ended up crashing since the blond was so jittery all the time.

"Aw, but I'll probably finish it before we get home! Or it'll melt. I'unno. Whichever is faster, I guess." Regardless of his statement, Nagisa retracted the ice cream and sat down.

At the rate Rei was sighing at, he was sure he was going to lose his soul before he knew it. But Nagisa was always so worrisome that he couldn't help it. The good news was that Nagisa seemed to have finally decided to behave. They were getting close to their destination, so all Rei had to do was tough it out for a few minutes more.

The ride continued in relative silence, though Nagisa occasionally mumbled things under his breath and let out sharp little cries while eating. Knowing the other boy, he was probably complaining about how fast the frozen treat was melting and getting on his hand.

A small smile drifted to Rei's mouth as he imagined how frustrated and concentrated Nagisa must've looked at the moment while he tried to keep his ice cream under control. He tilted his head back a little and teasingly said, "I told you to wait until we got back. You'd better not be making a mess on the back of my shirt, Nagisa-ku—"

His sentence suddenly cut off at the end when he saw something white dart in front of his bike out of his peripheral vision. He saw it just at the edge of where his frames ended, so it was all a blur until he whipped his head to the front again.

_Cat_.

It was the one word that registered in his mind before his arms automatically jerked the handlebars to the right and he clenched on the back brakes hard. Rei faintly heard an offended yowl and hiss before the white blob disappeared into the scruffy underbrush next to the road.

Neither of them was prepared for the sudden directional change and stop. Momentum and centrifugal force took care of the rest. A million formulas and calculations sped through Rei's head in that split-second of confusion, but all they did was make him panic more.

In the end, the only thing that pushed aside all his thoughts was a hard lurch in his chest and a single name.

_Nagisa-kun!_

They were lucky that there were no metal guardrails where they had been biking, or else things could have been much worse. They weren't very pretty to begin with, but it was marginally better than crashing into hard railing.

A sharp pain jolted up Rei's elbow as he landed on it and slid on the floor. His right leg made a hard impact on the gravel and was crushed under the solid bars of his bike, making it throb and burn where it had jostled against flesh and bone. He let out a cry as the world came spinning to a blurry stop.

His glasses had fallen off, and he was further blinded by the pain that wracked his body. Despite this, the first thing he did when he regained his bearings was push off his bike and twist his body around. The front wheel was still spinning weakly as it slid off his body and clunked onto the paved road.

"Nagisa-kun!" he cried out, trying to prop himself up on his palm, only to flinch in pain as he felt the rawness of what could only be scraped off skin. He pushed through it and grappled with the crumpled heap crouching immediately behind him. "Nagisa-kun!"

The blond was sitting up and clutching at his right arm and, from the fuzzy outline that Rei could see, all his limbs seemed to be bent in the right direction. He swallowed, grateful that nothing obvious seemed broken. Bruises and swelling they could deal with, but broken bones were something else.

"Are you okay? Nagisa-kun?" Rei squinted hard, trying to see the boy's face.

It took a second for Nagisa to look up and reply. "Y-Yeah, I'm okay. Just a little scratched up." His voice sounded dry and shook.

"What hurts?" he asked while reaching out to him. His depth perception was mildly skewed, so he had to grope around a bit before his fingers found purchase on Nagisa's shoulder.

"My arm and leg. I'm fine though, I think I just got a little bruised." His breathing was a slightly shallow, but at least his words had stabilized.

"Nothing broken?"

"No, nothing that bad."

Rei let out a sigh of relief. "Good."

"Rei-chan, are you okay?" he asked, redirecting the focus to him.

"Same. I'm the same. I think I'm just scratched up and bruised, but I should be o—" He stopped speaking when he saw bright red drip between Nagisa's fingers, which have been steadily clutching at his upper arm. "You're bleeding!"

"Just a bit! It's probably just a scratch or something. You don't have to freak out so much, Rei-chan!"

But the taller boy was not listening at all. He turned his body around again and squinted for his glasses. Thankfully, they were gaudy enough for him to spot even when half-blind. It was times like this when Rei was thankful he kept purchasing red frames. He snatched them up and shoved them behind his ears, noting with distracted relief that the glass hadn't been damaged.

The world immediately sharpened into focus, and he returned his attention to Nagisa's arm.

He paled immediately. _Maybe it's worse than it looks_, he thought, swallowing hard and reaching out to Nagisa with shaking hands. "Let me see," he said, forcing his voice to stay calm. He was frightened, but it would do no good to freak out at a moment like this.

"It's nothing, Rei-chan! Like I said, it's probably just a scratch and doesn't even hurt that much!" Nagisa laughed to try and dispel the worry scrawled across Rei's alarmingly serious face, but he wasn't fooling anyone. The taller boy could see exactly how pale he was, now that he had his glasses on. The blood from his lips and cheeks had drained away, leaving him sallow and soaked in cold sweat.

Examining wounds half-sprawled in the middle of the sidewalk was not ideal, however, and Rei immediately looked up to try and gauge their distance from his home. Thankfully, it was only another two minutes' bike ride. He turned his gaze back to Nagisa, who hadn't really moved much from his position.

"Can you stand?" he asked as he began to push his feet against the ground. Carefully, he tested his own balance. It didn't feel like anything was broken, but he could never be too sure. Once he was able to stand properly, he leaned over to help Nagisa.

The smaller boy winced slightly as he started lift himself up and almost buckled when he leaned weight on his right leg. Rei instantly caught him by the elbow and eased the pressure off that side of Nagisa's body. His left palm burned when he pressed it against the blond's arm. He'd have to take care of the rawness there too, but Nagisa was his top priority at the moment.

After making sure that Nagisa was standing, he leaned down to his bike. Some of the paint had been scrubbed off and there were large scratches down the side of it. The front basket also sported a sizeable dent, but it wasn't anything Rei couldn't bear with. At least the wheels and tires were undamaged.

His backpack had shuffled out from when he tossed the bike off. He unzipped it and began to dig through it. He took out an emergency first-aid kit. People always laughed at him for carrying one with him at all times, but he would always rather be safe than sorry. Right now, he felt infinitely grateful that he had it with him.

Ideally, he wanted to clean out Nagisa's wound first, but he just wanted to get back home as quickly as possible, so he pulled out some strip gauze and asked Nagisa to show him his arm.

Rei was appalled by how bad it looked. Dirt and debris clung onto his skin, and blood was still slowly oozing from it. Nagisa's uninjured hand was covered with sticky blood. It looked extremely painful.

There were so many things he wanted to say, but Rei swallowed all his words. They couldn't afford to continue dawdling here.

"I'm going to wrap some gauze on your cut to stop the bleeding first, okay? I want to go home so I can properly treat the wounds," he said, keeping his voice steady and low. Nagisa looked more shaken up than Rei had ever seen him before, and that alone scared him to death. But he couldn't have both of them panicking, so he pushed down his rising terror and uncertainty.

Quietly, Nagisa nodded.

Rei gingerly applied the gauze, careful not to wrap it around too tightly. There was still dirt around the wound and he didn't want to get any into the actual injury. After that, he applied some medical tape onto the end to keep it from slipping off.

"Still doing okay?" he tried to reconfirm. It was unnerving for Nagisa not to verbally respond to him, but Rei accepted the jerky nod he was given. He put the supplies back into his bag and righted his bicycle.

"Let's go then, Nagisa-kun." He held still as Nagisa climbed onto the rack on the back of the bike again.

"Hold onto me," Rei said, swallowing thickly. He almost melted into Nagisa's warm touch out of relief when the smaller boy wrapped his left arm around his waist and stomach and pressed his forehead against his back. His fingers were still stained and sticky with blood as the gripped into Rei's uniform shirt, but he didn't complain. "I'm going to go now," he said. Nagisa's forehead rubbed against the back of his shirt as he nodded.

The kick off was a little rough, and Rei nearly lost his nerves when they wobbled, but he straightened out and headed for his house. His hand stung when it came in contact with the handlebar, and he was sure that the skin there had come off. He didn't want to look at it though.

The usually two-minute ride took five because of how cautious Rei was being, but they got there eventually. Nagisa had been uncharacteristically still the entire ride.

Rei made sure Nagisa was able to get off the bike and led him to the front door before unlocking it quickly and leading the blond in.

"Kitchen," he said tersely, walking and taking out his first-aid kit at the same time. He hit the light switch and the room brightened up immediately. By the time they reached the sink, Rei noticed that Nagisa was carefully controlling his breathing, as if trying not to hyperventilate.

"Nagisa-kun," he called out, concern seeping deep into his words. "Are you okay?"

At the sound of his name, Nagisa snapped out of his daze. He smiled unconvincingly. "Yeah. I'm fine. I just—bleed easily, and I don't like the sight of blood." While saying this, he pointedly avoided looking at his bloodied hand.

Rei pursed his lips together and got to work quickly.

Before treating Nagisa, he had to make sure his own wounds were taken care of. As suspected, the skin on his left palm had rubbed off messily due to friction burn, and whatever was left on the large wound was dirty with gravel. Its redeeming point was its relative shallowness. He wasn't bleeding much from there, but it still stung. The injury on his elbow was a little more severe, but Rei foresaw it bruising badly and no more than that. It bled, but it was already clotting over.

He turned on the tap and put his hand under the flow, carefully rinsing off the dirt that clung onto his chafed skin. After that, he bent his arm awkwardly to clean the cut on his elbow. That one smarted a little more, but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. Rei reached for his first-aid kit, opened it, and took a sealed paper packet out. He tore it open and peeled some large, sterile gauze pads from it. With those, he gently dried his cuts.

Then, he took out a roll of strip gauze and wrapped it around his hand to cover up the scratches. After disinfecting his hands where he had touched his own blood, he fished out some gloves from the kit and put them on.

As he took more supplies out from his kit, he said, "Wash your hands first, Nagisa-kun."

The boy obediently cleaned his hands of blood with soap and warm water, occasionally swallowing and breathing deeply.

When he was done, Rei gently called out to him. "Let me see the cut."

With a halting nod, the blond shifted his body to face the taller boy. The taller boy slowly unraveled the gauze he had applied earlier. Some of the threads stuck to his arm due to the stickiness of his blood, but at least it was only oozing slowly now. It was mostly clotted over now, which relieved Rei.

It was a little hard to see where the actual wound was, since there was still loose gravel and debris mixing with the blood. Rei's first line of action was to clean it up the best he could.

"I'm going to help you rinse it out with water now, okay?" He wanted to make sure that the boy knew exactly what they were doing, so his uneasiness would not be as bad. After receiving another nod, he turned on the water and slowly led Nagisa's arm under it.

Tiny plinks sounded in the sink and small rocks were rinsed from Nagisa's skin. The water ran a little pink as blood came off. Gingerly, he used his gloved fingers to rub off stubborn blood stains or stuck-on gravel.

Rei was comforted to see that it wasn't too deep a cut and Nagisa was right about bleeding easily. His earlier hope that maybe it just looked worse than it should be was true as well. It didn't appear like Nagisa would require stitches, which he had initially feared.

Following that, the taller boy used a disinfectant wipe to dab at the area surrounding the wound. Once or twice, he accidentally touched up against the cut, which made Nagisa whimper slightly. Whenever that happened, he gently blew on the cut to soothe the stinging. Soon, he was done.

"Still doing alright?" he asked, looking at Nagisa. Some of his nerves had faded, but he was still a little pale.

"Yeah," the blond replied. This time, his smile was genuinely comforting.

"Good," Rei said, a tiny smile on his own lips. "We're almost done. I'm going to apply some antibiotic cream on you and then wrap it up again. Let's go to my room."

"Okay," Nagisa said, his breathing less maintained and more natural.

The taller boy threw away all the trash he had created and stripped off his gloves. "Come on," he said, walking out of the kitchen.

They settled on his bed, and Rei carefully applied the cream onto Nagisa's arm with a cotton swab. Of course the wound was still red and raw but now that it was cleaned, it looked a lot better than it had a few minutes ago.

As Rei started to wrap up Nagisa's arm with strip gauze again, his hands trembled. The calm he had forced on himself was starting to slip. He had been scared, but to keep them from panicking, he had pushed everything down. Now that both of them were safe, Rei was feeling a little strung-up.

Once the last bit of tape was pressed onto the gauze, Rei turned away to replace all his supplies in the kit. Nagisa was quiet too, as he curiously ran his fingers over the clean strips.

The silence in the room suffocated Rei, as a flood of emotions washed over him. His heart began racing when he thought about how the bike had pitched to the side and they had both fallen off, the ball of white he managed not to hit disappearing from his vision with a scathing hiss. If they had been riding the bike at a busier time, when there were cars passing by and he did the same thing—…

"Sorry," he blurted out, his hands shaking as he closed the lid to the kit. "I got us both hurt. If I had been paying closer attention to the road and noticed the cat before it jumped out, then this wouldn't have happened."

Behind him, Nagisa didn't say anything for a second. "Rei-chan?"

"I know we're okay right now, but that could have ended a lot worse. If the bike had fallen on you the wrong way, or you had landed on your head, or if a car had been passing by, then you could have broken a bone or even—"

But before Rei's words got out of hand he began to panic, Nagisa pressed his left hand against his back and gently said, "Rei-chan…. Look at me."

With a long, shuddery breath, Rei turned around but he couldn't look Nagisa in the eye. He felt so ashamed and guilty for putting them in danger.

Warm hands pressed against his cheeks and he was being pulled down for a kiss.

Rei didn't understand, but he still closed his eyes and let Nagisa press his lips against him, moving slowly.

When they broke apart, Nagisa's piercing eyes were fixed upon his. "Rei-chan, you're the smartest guy I know but sometimes, you can be so _stupid_!"

The taller boy gaped at him.

Nagisa bumped his forehead against him and sighed.

"If we're gonna play the blame game, then I was the one who dragged you out in the first place. And you always warn me to stay in my seat and stop moving too, right? And I always wiggle around anyway. But besides that, it's not your fault that you were trying to avoid a kitty."

"But—"

Nagisa made a face at him which clearly said, "Nope," and pushed their lips together again to shut him up.

Rei tried to speak again when Nagisa let him back away, but he got no further than "Nagisa-ku—" before the blond kissed him once more. This repeated itself a few more times until Nagisa could pull back and Rei didn't try to say something.

"Glad you understand, Rei-chan," the smaller boy said wryly, pecking him lightly and falling back. Nagisa's persistence had its charms as well. "Now give me that first-aid kit! Why're you putting it away when your own cuts are still like that?" he demanded.

The bespectacled boy couldn't think of an answer that didn't involve stuttering, so he just sighed and handed the kit over with an exasperated but pleased smile.

Nagisa was just as loving and careful with treating Rei's cuts as Rei was with his. He nipped at Rei's fingertips as he treated his palm with antibiotic cream and gauze, and he nuzzled his head against the taller boy's shoulder when he applied the large bandage on his elbow.

After that, Rei got up to change his shirt—because Nagisa's blood was still stained on the front—and he returned with some ice packs for their various bruises. They compared the violent patterns blooming on their legs, and Nagisa kept laughing and making silly comments. Rei was relieved to see how much more relaxed he had become, compared to how tense and tight-lipped he had been half an hour ago.

If not for the unnecessarily copious amounts of blood that Nagisa had lost, then his unusually listless demeanor had scared him half to death. But now, it was as if nothing happened. Except for the gauze on their cuts and ice packs on their bruises, it really would seem like nothing happened.

"Ah, it's too cold! I'll put it back on later," Nagisa complained, tossing his ice pack onto the low table in the center of the room. He flopped down on the bed, but kept his arm carefully elevated from the mattress. Then, he turned to face Rei and his expression melted softly. Nagisa watched him for a few moments before sitting up and crawling over to him. He curled up against Rei's side, carefully avoiding their wounds.

Rei was mildly surprised, but he smiled and wrapped his arm gingerly around Nagisa's shoulders. He threw his ice pack on the table too, not caring about the condensation gathering up on the glass.

"I was really scared earlier, you know," Nagisa said quietly, his voice pressing against Rei's chest. The energy he had been displaying earlier burned low again. "When we fell. It really hurt, and there was so much blood. And even though I knew it wasn't that bad, I was still scared." Absently, he stroked the white bandages on his arm. "But Rei-chan, you were so sure of what to do the entire time and made sure I was okay. And that's when I knew there was nothing to worry about.

"Thank you for that," he said finally. Rei could hear the smile in his voice.

He took in a deep breath. "I was scared too. I was so scared that something bad had happened to you, I didn't know what to do at first. But I didn't want to worry you, so I just… did what I had to do."

_I was scared when you looked so pale and silent_, he wanted to add, but he didn't. He just conveyed those feelings by hugging Nagisa closer to him.

It had only been a few weeks since they started dating and only months since they first met each other. It was too soon and too fast for these kinds of feelings to be in his chest, and Rei was torn between being cynical and denying them or passionate and letting them sweep him away.

He wondered, between the snatches of warmth and comfort he was feeling while holding the blond, if it was because this was his first relationship. And then he wondered if it was because it was Nagisa.

Somehow, the thought of Nagisa getting hurt terrified him to the point where he thought he would throw up. What would he had done if the boy really got hurt and didn't just get away with one bad scrape and a handful of nasty looking bruises? Would he ever be able to forgive himself?

Suddenly, his chin jerked up as Nagisa head-butted him.

"Ouch!" he said out of reflex, a hand coming up to rub at the tiny injury. "What was that for?"

"You're thinking too hard again!" Nagisa scolded, tilting his head back to look at him. "Don't be silly."

Rei's eyes widened marginally in surprise. Then, he smiled. "Yeah. You're right," he agreed, leaning down to Nagisa, who had been patiently waiting. They kissed, softly and affectionately, trying to tell each other a million things without words and somehow managing to do it.

Nagisa sighed happily as they ended their kiss. He looked absolutely content.

"I kinda wish I was able to finish my ice cream though. It was really good," he said finally.

Rei made an exasperated face at him. So much for the mood. "Nagisa-kun, you're going to give me ulcers one of these days."

The blond only grinned and tackled him down to the mattress, clinging onto him like a sea-star and giggling the entire time.


End file.
